“The best revenge on someone who has caused you harm is to show that person that, despite his or her best shot at you, you not only survived but are now flourishing.” – Xrayvsn

(by the way, one day when this is made into a meme and on whatever social media platform is reigning supreme, I want future generations to see this quote next to greats like Winston Churchill and Einstein and say, “What or Who the hell is an Xrayvsn?”

A central theme in multiple cultures/religions is the concept of rebirth:

In the bible, the story of Noah and the ark told of a world wide flood that served as a cleansing and offered a second chance for humanity.

In Hinduism, Lord Shiva periodically performs a dance of destruction to cleanse the cosmos and make it possible for subsequent creation.

In Greek mythology, the Phoenix is a long lived bird that after 500 years undergoes a rebirth by arising from its ashes.

These concepts served as inspiration and allowed me to pick myself up from the financial depths I found myself in and take action to undergo a financial rebirth of my own.

“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”-Winston Churchill

Rather than dwell on the money lost, I chose instead to analyze what went wrong and what I could do to prevent it from ever happening again.

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”-George Santayana

The one positive thing that came out of my divorce (besides decoupling me from a toxic person) was that it served as a wake-up call.

About to turn 40 and having the financial rug pulled out from under me served as an impetus to begin my financial transformation.

If I ever wanted to retire, much less retire early, I could ill-afford to make any further mistakes.

My financial train had derailed but I knew I could get back on track.

I therefore began to attack my biggest weakness, lack of financial education.

There are many excuses a busy professional such as a physician, can find to avoid taking any steps to becoming financially literate:

Point: Lack of Time

I get it. There are only so many hours in the day. A typical physician far exceeds the normal 40 hour work week just in the normal course of a regular medical practice. Add in additional time consumers such as being on call and/or periodic weekend duties and what little precious time remains certainly should not be “wasted” on learning non-medical material such as finance.

Counterpoint:

Becoming financially savvy allows you to potentially catch mistakes early allowing your nest egg to grow to a point which can provide you with financial independence and/or the ability to retire early. A small time investment upfront can provide a large time reward later on.

Jim Dahle, of White Coat Investor, recommends just reading one finance book a year for your CFE (Continued Financial Education) so the time commitment is not as onerous as it is made out to be

Point: I don’t want to be embarrassed by my lack of knowledge

A physician is perceived as someone who is intelligent and has vast amounts of knowledge stored in his or her brain. Sometimes ego gets in the way and it is often very difficult for us to seek out help, afraid that this would show some flaws in the armor.

Counterpoint:

Given the information age we live in, there are numerous blogs that can provide valuable insight not only by the actual posts but by member forums and comments. These sites can be visited anonymously with much information gleaned.

I have also found that this financial community is very forgiving of one’s past mistakes. There are truly no stupid questions. From my experience, submitting questions on forums or posting comments after posts, I have always had genuine caring responses. Members truly want to see each other succeed.

Point: I will just pay someone to do it for me

True it is easier to hand over the reigns and let a “professional” take care of it

Counterpoint:

Convenience comes at a price. Some asset managers will charge 1% of the Assets Under Management (AUM). For a million dollar portfolio this will cost $10,000/yr.

Bear in mind, using the suggested safe withdrawal rate of 3-4%, a million dollar portfolio only provides an annual safe withdrawal of $30,000-40,000/yr.

Do you really want 25-33% of this to pay a wealth manager to babysit your funds?

Another way to look at is if you are withdrawing $30k/yr, the additional $10k savings on top of that is equivalent to a 33% raise.

That seemingly small 1% AUM fee can therefore be quite deceiving

Potentially compounding the costs to your nest egg are those managers who do frequent trading/churning of your portfolio. This drives up secondary costs such as transaction fees as well as having more tax implications with unfavorable short term gains.

Do not assume that just because you are paying someone to do financial tasks it is done right.

A close colleague of mine recently discovered that his CPA made an error regarding his state income taxes for an LLC he owned. Luckily he decided to take charge of his finances and discovered this error. After filing an addendum he was able to recoup $15k from the 3 year window allowed by law (unfortunately this error encompassed several years prior to that that could not be recouped).

As I continue to discover new blogs or read new books I will update my reading list.

The daily time commitment to view any new posts these blogs publish at most takes 15 minutes out of my day.

And because of that small daily time commitment, I have saved tens of, if not hundreds of, thousands of dollars by steering away from ill advised investments, eliminating the need for a financial advisor, and also tempering any knee-jerk reactions I have to market swings.

Superpower take home points:

No one has a better interest in your finances than you and as such you should do your best to maximize your financial knowledge

A small investment in time upfront (especially early in one’s career) can provide a large time benefit later, potentially allowing you to retire early

It is never to late to have a financial rebirth so that you can rise from the ashes and set yourself on better financial path.

(And don’t forget to subscribe to this blog to be always notified of new posts)

NOTE: The website XRAYVSN contains affiliate links and thus receives compensation whenever a purchase through these links is made (at no further cost to you). Although these proceeds help keep this site going they do not have any bearing on the reviews of any products I endorse which are from my own honest experiences. Thank you- XRAYVSN

Can’t agree with your point about time investment enough. I struggled with the same thing, especially in the first couple of years out of training. But if you look at your financial education as an investment, you won’t find a better return anywhere. I found finance very intimidating and overwhelming when I first started trying to learn about it. But after a bad experience with a financial advisor, I realized that the only way to ensure I wasn’t being taken advantage of was to learn enough to at least speak intelligently. And like anything else, once you dedicate yourself and… Read more »

I really appreciate it Ray. It is sad that financial education is not a required subject in the education of today’s doctors. It’s almost like they are setting us to fail. There are so many great financial blogs and books out there that it really is not that much of a time commitment to become educated enough to manage one’s finances. And honestly it is not work for me. I genuinely love reading up on the subject and especially other people’s experiences. I had a financial advisor try to talk me into needing his service and remember him emailing me… Read more »

I just binge read your series on “I pretty much made every financial mistake in the book.” A lot of the early ones are pretty common among physicians. But boy… the last two posts were heavy and rough. I’m glad you made it through. Looking forward to hearing more about your rebirth. The Phoenix rises from the ashes!!!

Thank you so much for the comment. Yeah I could have survived the first set of mistakes no problem. It was the last two that I hope no one else has to go through because it was incredibly rough. And I really sugarcoated it too with a G rated version. My ex had no moral compass at all and her lawyer and her concocted every thing (and I mean everything) to destroy me (and only 6 yrs later when her mental conditioned declined to a point where anyone could see did my side of the story prove to be the… Read more »

I try to tell myself there’s a lesson in every failure, but some lessons are much harder to swallow. I’ve had several patients who are still totally devastated from divorce, financially and emotionally, even 10, 15, 20 years down the line. I’m glad you’ve been able to pull yourself back on track!

Thanks Millennial Doc. I was fortunate to recover relatively quickly because of my high income and finally seeing the light. I agree divorce can be devastating to anyone and can postpone not only early retirement but even traditional retirement by decades.

I really like the theme of rising from the ashes of failure and destruction. It shows that no one is perfect but anyone can have a chance at success. It does take an investment of time and education, but the rewards will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Thanks Millionaire Doc. Definitely think any knowledge gained in learning finance has a huge return on the initial time investment

Loading...

Reply

11 months ago

Guest

Saleh Sarwar

“Why are you opening up to complete strangers on the internet to bare your past mistakes?” and “What more can you possibly contribute to the blogosphere that hasn’t already been told by many that are probably far more qualified to do so?”
This is not so true. Hundreds , if not thousands, of physicians benefit from your blog every day. Please keep writing

Wow. Thank you so much for the touching comment. You have no idea how gratifying it is to receive feedback like that. Those feelings about opening up to complete strangers and thinking I was not qualified to start a blog and contribute useful content was exactly how I felt and kept me shut out for a period of at least 2 years. I had one particular colleague, a fellow radiologist, plead with me to start a blog because he saw my enthusiasm and whenever I wrote to fellow physicians in a group email how to help themselves financially he said… Read more »

Reply

11 months ago

Guest

Gasem

I hate the 1% financial adviser argument. It is a straw man. If you have a 3 million portfolio you can get management for half that, 5 million 1/3 of that, so lets say 33 bp Generally a manager can get you into funds that are institutional quality not retail. I have DFA funds which are tilted according to Fama & French (since they are the designers and on the board) so my funds consistently pay 150bp more than the retail fund. In other words my portfolio is in some respect managed by Gene Fama and Ken French. Soooo 150-33… Read more »

I probably need to increase my portfolio to that level. 33 basis points is not bad at all for management and institutional quality funds like DFA. Right now the ones I qualify for have stated 1% AUM. Don’t think I want to do it for that much fee.

Loading...

Reply

11 months ago

Guest

Gasem

I’m NOT recommending these guys they are just an example of what’s out there based on a 10 minute internet search

[…] Xrayvsn.com is run by my favorite Physician blogger who blogs about many various aspects of money. He is a Physician who is pursuing financial independence and inspires me on my own journey to financial independence. He has been incredibly supportive of what I do here at savingjoyfully.com and he is a great resource for me as a blogger, offering me advice and encouragement which has been greatly appreciated. He has some awesome quality financial Insight and advice over on his blog. I know that even those of us who are not Physician’s can benefit from a lot of his great… Read more »

Reply

8 months ago

Guest

Dr Bob

The actual expression you are purloining (lol) is “The best revenge is living well”-George Herbert